Dead Souls: From the iconic #1 bestselling author of A SONG FOR THE DARK TIMES

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A contributor to BBC2's Newsnight Review, he also presented his own TV series, Ian Rankin's Evil Thoughts, on Channel 4 in 2002. He recently received the OBE for services to literature, and opted to receive the prize in his home city of Edinburgh, where he lives with his partner and two sons.

I'm sure that the format of a novella; its brevity and concision, lends itself perfectly to some stories. Hey, it might even do so for the tale of a Scottish detective and a missing person. But I'm not convinced it particularly works for Rebus. Maybe that's just because, eight books in, I'm used to a certain rhythm to a Rebus story, one which can't really be achieved with this word count. A Rebus book is always playful with how it tells the story - there's always a number of different plot lines - often conflicting, calling out for our protagonist's attention and pushing him into impossible corners. And Rankin teases out these plot lines giving you a little at a time, never giving you the full picture until he has to. These sub plots work in solidarity to enhance the overall story, and their absence was the most striking thing to me about 'Death is Not the End' - leaving it feeling a little simplistic and ultimately unfulfilling. I was surprised and touched to read in the intro that the title is a reference to a Joy Division song - I had assumed that it referred in some way to Gogol. Detective Constable George "Hi-Ho" Silvers is a police officer who was based at St Leonards. He is described as "coasting towards his pension." Basically, this is one of the subplots of Dead Souls -- Rebus' looking for the missing son of a people he knew in school -- in its original form. It'd be modified, expanded, and given a different ending in the novel. There's a subplot, mildly related, involving organized crime and gambling -- in much the same way that other crimes were associated with the missing person's case in Dead Souls.While investigating a poisoner at Edinburgh Zoo, Detective Inspector John Rebus sees Darren Rough, a known paedophile, seemingly photographing children and decides to 'out' the man, in spite of assurances that he wants to reform. Later Rebus tries to help Darren, thinking better of his action, but is unable to stop him being murdered.

The first series is very different in both format and style. Hannah's portrayal of Rankin's world-weary detective was questioned by many who knew the books, as he did not physically match their image of Rebus. Hannah himself has said he felt forced into the role, having been executive producer, when his own choice for the role, Peter Mullan, was rejected by STV. [2] In later novels, Cafferty is a near-permanent figure, claiming to have gone straight while retaining criminal control of Edinburgh from behind the scenes. He is often linked to cases that Rebus and Clarke are investigating, but there is never enough evidence to bring charges against him.Clarke is much younger than Rebus. Her parents are English and politically active on the left. She has a college degree. She is a devoted follower of the Hibernian Football Club ("Hibs"). As a woman, she faces obstacles to acceptance in the police force, especially since, like Rebus, she enjoys the challenges of solving cases rather than administrative work or networking. As a high school teacher, there were many times a student's behavior would become crystal clear after meeting his parents. I'd run into problems with work ethic or attitude or whatever, and I'd think, "What's the deal with this kid?" Then I'd meet Mom and/or Dad in a parent conference and immediately realize, "Oh, of course that's why he [fill in the blank]." It would be some sort of weird mirror image, where son's classroom surliness was reflected in Dad's obvious displeasure at coming to school for a meeting. Detective Inspector Bobby Hogan is a police officer based at Leith police station. He appears in most of the novels from The Hanging Garden (1998) to A Question of Blood (2003). He is an intelligent cop and he and Rebus enjoy working together. Professor "Sandy" Gates is a forensic pathologist who appears frequently in the Rebus series between 1996 and 2006. He and Dr. Curt are the usual medical examiners who dissect the bodies of victims. In 2013's Saints of the Shadow Bible (Chapter 13) we hear that he has been dead for some years.

Salisbury Crag" has become rhyming slang in the city. It means skag, heroin. "Morningside Speed" is cocaine. A snort of coke just now would do him the world of good, but wouldn't be enough. Arthur's Seat could be made of the stuff: in the scheme of things, it wouldn't matter a damn. Rebus finds himself being investigated by an old friend after a murderer walks free on a technicality. Matters are made worse when the suspect and his brother are found dead, and the prosecutor in the case is found to have been paid off to discredit Rebus and his colleagues. Those left alive must continue to cope with their problems. Knowing some answers does not really resolve the divisions and imperfections in society which it is the job of Rebus and his colleagues to police. He is initially introduced as a Detective Sergeant, and is promoted to Detective Inspector early in the series.The First Stone" is the first and only story to be featured throughout the series which is not based upon a full Rebus novel, rather a novella from a collection of short stories. "Knots and Crosses" is the only story which despite bearing the name of a Rankin book, does not share the plot. Rankin being Rankin, there are a panoply of other features with which Rebus has to contend: a third case involving the missing adult son of two of Rebus' childhood friends; a fling with an old high school flame; thinly-veiled criticism of the 1% (fifteen years before it was popular); the fallout from his daughter's near-death experience in the previous book; the responsibility of the media not to turn killers into celebrities; and so on. It's a little busy. But somehow Rankin keeps all the plates spinning, even while he attempts to explore larger issues of morality. In Standing in Another Man's Grave (2013) he is a distant antagonist, suspicious of John Rebus. However, in Saints of the Shadow Bible he needs Rebus's help on an investigation, and they develop a rapport; he also meets and admires Siobhan Clarke, and the three of them become a kind of team. In Rather Be the Devil (2016) and subsequent novels, he has been transferred to the Scottish Crime Campus at Gartcosh, but he is given assignments in Edinburgh when the Gartcosh chiefs need to be involved in a case, and then he rejoins Rebus and Clarke on their investigations. He gradually gains confidence in the field as well as in rooms full of case files. In A Song for the Dark Times, he and 'Big Ger' Cafferty manipulate each other in the way Cafferty and Rebus often do.

This is my fifteenth John Rebus novel, and before starting this book I had a question in my mind. When an author as successful as Rankin has been with his tough and idiomatic Scottish thrillers, a problem sets in after several books: how to keep the formula fresh?Confused? Yeah, sure, I am -- and I wrote that summary. Somehow, Rankin is able to take all that mess and assemble it into a novel that actually makes sense -- with all of these stories being tied together, not just with over-lapping themes, but in reality in some sort of 6 degrees of separation fashion -- even excluding DI Rebus. It's really very impressive watching how Rankin weaves every strand of story and character in this novel -- it always is, but this web seems more intricate than usual. One thing is that, after reading a John Rebus' book, I have an anguished feeling of visiting Edinburgh, see all those places describe the author with my own eyes. The series is set in Edinburgh and Rankin displays an unnerving knowledge of, seemingly, how crime works there. Rankin has a very unique of displaying simplistic events. His engrossing words will get under your skin. For the first time in ten books starring Detective Inspector John Rebus, Ian Rankin explores this issue in Dead Souls. As with most of the books in this series, there are two cases that first seem unrelated but which eventually intertwine in ways that are compelling and inevitable, and in this case both of them touch on the question of how much a criminal's past is to blame for his present. The more obvious example is Darren Rough, a convicted pedophile (who himself was a victim of sexual abuse as a child living in an orphanage) who served his jail sentence and has now been set free. When Rebus discovers that Rough has been assigned an apartment with a view of a children's playground, he "outs" Rough to the other tenants with disastrous consequences.